Election Day Is in Full Swing in Santa Barbara County

About 90,000 ballots have been cast before Election Day in Santa Barbara County, with thousands more expected to pour in today. 

“We’re definitely gonna go over 100,000” ballots cast, said Elections Division Supervisor Hector Gonzalez, out of a total of 248,945 registered voters in the county.

“Yesterday was a record: We had 10,200 ballots received,” said County Elections czar Joe Holland to members of the Superior Court of Santa Barbara’s Civil Grand Jury and members of the media during an Election Day tour of the County Elections Office. 

Official counts are scheduled to start being released after polls close at 8 p.m., but results may be coming in later than usual. 

This year a new California state law goes into effect restricting the release of election results until after all polling locations have closed across the state. If one county needs to keep their polls open past 8 p.m., all counties statewide must wait to release their numbers until all polls are closed. 

Last Tuesday, Holland returned to the office in person to preside over his last election. His battle with multiple sclerosis has left him wheelchair bound and working from home for the past two years, and he will be retiring December 31 after losing his reelection bid to challenger Melinda Greene in June’s primary. He has been overseeing elections for the past 24 years, with his first go being Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2003 recall election. 

“It’s not an easy thing to go from being able to walk and being a public figure to then having to come in in a wheelchair. It’s kind of hard to accept mentally,” said Holland. “I’m going to miss it a lot, but you know, time moves on.”

In addition to the 67 polling places across the county, this election the county has deployed an additional 18 drop box locations, far above the one required drop box by law. Tonight, each drop box location will have two election officials there to officially close the box and collect ballots at 8 p.m. sharp. 

All ballots from across the county will be collected, placed into sealed and locked trucks escorted by the Sheriff’s Office and dropped off at the County Elections Office on Calle Real to be counted. 

Then the process, which has been ongoing since October 9, will begin with the last batch of ballots. 

First, sealed ballots whirr through a BlueCrest sorting machine and are divvied up by location. Next, they are sent to a team of human signature verifiers who sit at computer screens flashing voter ID, address, voter registration signature, and the ballot signature.

“If your name’s Robert and you sign Bob, we’re still going to accept it,” said Elections Division Manager Christina Valenzuela.

The verifiers will red flag suspicious signatures that then get sent to the supervisor, who double-checks it. 

“We are required by law to send a letter to every voter whose ballot has been challenged,” said Valenzuela. In addition to a letter, an email and phone call will also go out to the voter.

Once verified, ballots then make their way to an envelope slicing machine, where hands pluck the ballot from the envelope without ever seeing the names and signatures of those casting it. The envelopes get stored for the required 22 months before being disposed of. 

The pile of anonymous ballots go to a team of flatteners who decrease the folded ballots and stack them in boxes for tabulation. 

Down the hall and behind a security line, the boxes of ballots are collected and fed through a tabulation machine which collects the votes off each ballot. If a ballot cannot be read, maybe because of using a pencil, red pen, or check marks, a staff member will visually check the ballot and note which bubbles were marked.  

Once read, the ballots are placed into white cardboard boxes, sealed with tape, and filed away. 

“I think the department works very, very well all across all three divisions: clerk, recorder, assessor, and elections,” said Holland. “I’m proud of the staff that got here; they’re doing an amazing job.”

Initial counts will come in tonight after polls across the state close. Races with wide margins will be able to be called tonight, but final counts on tighter races will be decided in the days to come. All election results are required to be certified and sent to the County Board of Supervisors by December 3.